Archive for the ‘tim raines’ tag

Congratulations to a deserving 2017 Hall of Fame class; Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez were all elected through the most recent round of balloting.

This is the Class of 2017 Version of this post: first one was done after the 2014 Hall of Fame class was announced and the voting results made public, and then the next was done after the Class of 2015 was announced. And here’s the 2016 version of this post, from which all the text for prior ballots is cut-n-pasted. It is here for your reminiscing enjoyment.

Nats connected names on the 2017 ballot and 2017 eligible:

Ivan Rodriguez, aka “Pudge,” who surprisingly signed a 2-year deal with the team after the 2009 season and played his last two years with the rebuilding team, splitting time with the up-and-coming Wilson Ramos and retiring after the 2011 season. He was part of the rebound years for the franchise but missed out on their breakout 2012 season. There was some surprise when he got in on the 1st ballot, given his PED suspicions, but I take his election as a sign of the changing times with the electorate. There’s definitely a difference between suspicions and a real failed test, and inarguably Pudge is one of the best catchers of all time so there’s no reason to keep him out. Here’s a great link of a video of Pudge finding out he was elected.

Matt Stairs, whose name I can’t quite say without cursing, who sucked at the teet of the Washington Nationals payroll for half a season in 2011 before being mercifully released on August 1st of that year. Stairs now is now a regular in my semi-annual “Nats to Oblivion” posts, last done in April of 2016. He received zero votes and falls off the ballot.

Alex Cora: like Stairs, he signed on as a veteran FA to be a role player with the 2011 Nats and retired after the 2011 season. Unlike Stairs, Cora wasn’t judged to even be worthy to make the ballot.

(As we all know, Tim Raines,Vladimir Guerrero, Orlando Cabrera and Larry Walker all grew up with the Montreal franchise, but never appeared for the team post-move to Washington, so I havn’t included them here. Cabrera was the closest to appearing in a Nats uniform, getting traded to Boston mid 2004 season just prior to the move).

Not a single Nats-connected was on the official Class of 2016 ballot. As it turned out, There’s actually quite a few guys who were *candidates* for the 2016 ballot by requirements, but who didn’t make the cut who also had connections to the Nationals. In fact, there’s quite a few of them. Here’s a good list, thanks to the excellent research by Bill from platoonadvantage.com.

Ronnie Belliard: Played pretty well for the god-awful stretch of Nationals teams from 2007-2009, posting a nifty 123 OPS+ during the middle season before getting traded away at the 2009 trade deadline for two minor leaguers who never went anywhere (Luis Garcia, Victor Garate). Stuck with Los Angeles one more season before hanging them up at 35. Played parts of 13 seasons in the majors but didn’t rate a spot on the ballot.

Jesus Colome was an important part of the Nats bullpen during the same 2007-2009 span that Belliard was involved with, getting more than 120 appearances his first two seasons before posting an 8 ERA in 2009 and getting DFA’d in July. He got picked up the next year by Seattle and got a few appearances (hence why he’s not on the “Nats to Oblivion” lists) and, if you can believe it, is still pitching at age 37 in the independent Atlantic league as we speak. He did manage 10 distinct years w/ MLB appearances though, so he qualified.

Jose Guillen came to Washington with the Expos, played one solid year in 2005, had a season-ending elbow injury in 2006, then bounced around the league for a few more years. He was active for 14 total seasons but never made an all star game. He hit 24 homers for the surprising 2005 Nats … and led the league in HBPs.

Cristian Guzman signed a somewhat controversial 4yr/$16M contract (it cost the team its 2nd round pick) that started when the team moved to Washington, was god-awful his first year, then had to have shoulder surgery to miss the entirety of 2006. He recovered his stroke in 2007 and actually made the all-star team in 2008 (our only representative during the dark years) … which was enough to convince our idiot GM Jim Bowden to give him a 2yr/$16M extension to an aging shortstop w/ no power on the wrong side of 30. Not surprisingly, his OPS dropped 100 points in 2009 and the team dumped him on Texas in a trade-deadline deal after he had lost his starting job to Ian Desmond, netting the Nats two RHPs (one of which Tanner Roark makes this one of the better trades ever consummated by the Nats executive staff). Guzman played in 15 more games for Texas, batted .152 and never played again.

Aaron Boone, who signed a 1yr/$1M FA contract to be a backup corner infielder with the abhorrent 2008 Nationals team. Boone’s crowning baseball achievement was his extra innings walk-off homer that ended one of the best games in MLB history (Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS between Boston and the Yankees, ranked #6 by MLB’s panel a few years back when ranking the best 20 games of the last half century). Ironically one of his lowest moments was just a couple months later, blowing out his ACL that subsequent winter while playing pickup basketball, costing him the entirety of the 2004 season and the trust of the Yankees organization. He missed 2/3rds of the 2007 season after another left knee injury and the Nats were probably his last gasp shot at extending his career at the age of 35. He got a decent amount of playing time thanks to the fragility of Ryan Zimmerman and Nick Johnson, somehow got another guaranteed MLB deal the following year, went 0-14 for Houston and was released. He’s now an analyst with ESPN. Received 2 votes on the 2015 ballot.

Ron Villone signed a minor league deal in 2009 and was quickly added to the Nats active roster, where he appeared in 63 games as our primary one-out lefty. He pitched the entirety of 2010 on another minor league contract with Syracuse, posting a 6.59 ERA as a 40-year old and never earning a call-up. In 2011 he was invited to spring training again (perhaps with the hope that he’d join the organization as a coach) but he got cut, then pitched a handful of indy league games for his home-town New Jersey indy league team, got hammered, and hung them up. He retired having played in 15 seasons for no less than 12 different teams. In 2012 he took a pitching coach job with the Cubs organization (one of the teams he managed NOT to play for during his career) and has been moving up their organization in that capacity since. Received Zero Hall-of-Fame votes by virtue of not appearing on the BBWAA ballot.

Julian Tavarez signed a one-year deal in the beginning of 2009, started out decently but had an awful stretch that resulted in his DFA in mid July 2009. He never threw another pitch in organized ball, abruptly retiring considering his mid-season release. He ended a 17-year career spanning 11 different franchises. Received Zero Hall-of-Fame votes by virtue of not appearing on the BBWAA ballot. According to his wiki page, he now resides in a suburb of Cleveland (his original professional team) but does not list any post-career activities, baseball-related or otherwise. Received Zero Hall-of-Fame votes by virtue of not appearing on the BBWAA ballot.

Note: it is not entirely clear to me why Villone and Tavarez were not actually ON the 2015 ballot; both seem to have the qualifications (10 years of experience and 5 years retired) and both were on previous versions of the “anticipated ballot” at baseball-reference.com, but neither showed up on BBWAA’s official ballot for this year. Pete Kerzeldid a post reviewing “Nats connected” 2015 ballot members when the ballot came out in Nov 2014 and only mentioned Boone. I include them here since it seems to me they *should* be on the ballot and I’m not sure why they were not (unless someone is passing judgement on the “quality” of HoFame ballot members). Are they pushed to subsequent ballots for some reason? If anyone has insight i’d love to know.

Paul Lo Duca: one of Bowden’s more infamous signings; he went from our opening day catcher in the 2008 season to being released by August 1st. The highlight of his tenure here was having his name being revealed in the Mitchell Report just a couple days after signing with us. After his release, he signed on to finish out the season with Florida, took a year off and attempted a come back in 2010 (signing a ML contract with Colorado but never appearing above AAA). Hard to believe this guy was a 4-time all-star. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Royce Clayton; signed a contract to be the Nats shortstop during the lean Jim Bowden years, and then was included in the Mega swap of players that headed to Cincinnati in the 2006 season. He hung around for one more season in 2007 as a backup short stop and retired afterwards. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Mike Stanton was picked up in mid 2005 after being released by the Yankees, and he pitched well enough for the Nats that he was able to fetch a couple of low-level prospects in a late September move to Boston (who was looking for some late season bullpen cover). The team then re-signed Stanton for 2006, and flipped him again mid-season, this time to the Giants for Shairon Martis. Stanton toiled a one more season before hanging them up after 2007. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Vinny Castilla: signed a two year deal to join the Nats, timed with their inaugural season in Washington, but was traded to Colorado for SP Brian Lawrence when it became apparent that Ryan Zimmerman was set to man the hot corner in DC for the next decade or so. Played one more season and retired after 2006. Received Six (6) Hall-of-fame votes.

Carlos Baerga: signed a one year deal as a 36-yr old to join the Nats in their inaugural season and serve as a backup infielder. Hit .253 in part-time duty and hung ’em up after a 14-year career that can be well described as “journey-man.” He was an integral part of the early 90s Cleveland Indians as their starting 2nd baseman and a 3-time all-star, and ended up playing on 6 major league teams and spent parts one season in Korea. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Important/Vital link for 2017 Hall of Fame vote tracking: Ryan Thibodaux‘s online tracker of all HoF votes, which is showing some very different trends in 2017 for long-time ballot candidates. You may have already seen some analysis of the early voting, from Bill James to Buster Olney. The big shock so far is just how much support both of the major PED-tainted candidates (Bonds and Clemens) have gained since last year. Some (most?) attribute this to the veteran’s electing of Bud Selig, who presided over the Steroid era and did little to stop it. The thinking probably goes, “well if Selig is in, he’s just as culpable as the players, so i’m now voting for Bonds/Clemens).

With my imaginary ballot, here’s how i’d vote. Since there’s a (ridiculous) limit of 10 players per ballot, I’ll list these players in rough order of voting priority to start:

New Ballot Candidates:

Absolute Yes on Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez (and with Pudge, the first “Nationals” connected player to make it!)

Why support Hoffman but not Smith and Wagner? Probably a fair question and probably not supported by stats when you compare all three guys together. But that’s why its the “Hall of Fame” and not the “Hall of WAR” or the “Hall of Stats.” Hoffman was more famous than these other relievers. I always viewed Smith as a good-but-not-great reliever who compiled stats, and I viewed Wagner as an electric and under-rated closer without near the career accomplishments of Hoffman.

Why support McGriff/Guerrero but not Walker? You can make the argument that Walker’s numbers were a product of Colorado … and you can make the alternative argument too. I think for me the fact that Walker couldn’t reach even 400 homers while playing in the launching pad in Denver is an indictment of his career. Walker was a fine hitter … but he never inspired the league wide “fear” that Guerrero and McGriff did. He’s in the “Hall of Good” but not the “Hall of Fame” for me. Also it is worth noting that McGriff finished his career with 493 homers, but missed months out of the 1994 season at his peak. Had he eclipsed 500 homers … i think we’re having a different conversation about him. These artificial numbers (300, 3000, 500) are pretty important to voters. Guerrero himself was for a time absolutely “the best player in the game,” a title that I don’t think Walker can come close to claimin.

Why support Bonds and Ramirez but not Sosa? Something about Sosa’s career just screams “artificial.” He went from being a 35-home run hitter to a 66-home run hitter overnight, he has PED suspisions and a corked bat on his resume, and his skills disappeared as soon as testing became the norm.

So that gives me 6 “Yes” votes and another 6 less emphatic “yes” votes. So i’d have to cull two candidates to fit onto a 10-person ballot. I’d cut Schilling just on principle for the ridiculousness of his statements lately, and Hoffman on general anti-closer principles. So my hypothetical ballot is:

My prediction on who actually gets elected? Well, of course the PED issue comes into play. So three or four of my “Yesses” are going to struggle to get votes. So i’m guessing that the likes of Pudge and Manny don’t get 1st ballot votes, and Clemens/Bonds will continues to struggle. But based on there being three candidates that got pretty close last year, i’m going to guess that its a 3-man roster for 2017: Raines, Bagwell and Hoffman. And that’s a fine class. The tracker is showing Raines, Bagwell and Rodriguez well in the 75% range, with Bonds, Clemens, Hoffman and Guerrero in the 70-75% range. Which means that they’ll likely fall short in the end, since the non-public ballots are usually more parsimonious and more narrative-driven. Hoffman has enough of a narrative to perhaps maintain his 75% range though, so i’m putting him in first ballot (whether or not you think he deserves it).

One great change coming to HoFame balloting; no more secret ballots. Every idiot who has a ballot and turns in something nonsensical will now have to answer for his vote in the court of public opinion. Which I think is a great thing; no more sanctimonious votes preventing deserving players from getting their due.

Congrats to Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza for their election this year. Hopefully the high vote totals for Bagwell and Raines will lead to their election next year, where the ballot doesn’t really have any obvious candidates. (And let me qualify: I absolutely think there’s players on next year’s ballot who deserve to be in … its just that PED stain will probably prevent them from being slam-dunk candidates. More on that in next year’s episode of “how the Hall of Fame Ballot turns”).

This is the Class of 2016 Version of this post: first one was done after the 2014 Hall of Fame class was announced and the voting results made public, and then the next was done after the Class of 2015 was announced.

Here’s a review of every player who has Nationals ties who has appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot, along with their voting results. This post will let you answer the trivia question, “What former Nats player has come the closest to Hall of Fame enshrinement?” (Answer at the bottom)

Not a single Nats-connected is on the official Class of 2016 ballot. So, really the rest of this post is just cut and pasted from last year’s post. But we’ve published it for a trip down memory lane.

Post-publishing update: as I suspected but didn’t have a good way to research, there’s actually quite a few guys who were *candidates* for the 2016 ballot by requirements, but who didn’t make the cut who also had connections to the Nationals. In fact, there’s quite a few of them. Here’s a good list, thanks to the excellent research by Bill from platoonadvantage.com.

Ronnie Belliard: Played pretty well for the god-awful stretch of Nationals teams from 2007-2009, posting a nifty 123 OPS+ during the middle season before getting traded away at the 2009 trade deadline for two minor leaguers who never went anywhere (Luis Garcia, Victor Garate). Stuck with Los Angeles one more season before hanging them up at 35. Played parts of 13 seasons in the majors but didn’t rate a spot on the ballot.

Jesus Colome was an important part of the Nats bullpen during the same 2007-2009 span that Belliard was involved with, getting more than 120 appearances his first two seasons before posting an 8 ERA in 2009 and getting DFA’d in July. He got picked up the next year by Seattle and got a few appearances (hence why he’s not on the “Nats to Oblivion” lists) and, if you can believe it, is still pitching at age 37 in the independent Atlantic league as we speak. He did manage 10 distinct years w/ MLB appearances though, so he qualified.

Jose Guillen came to Washington with the Expos, played one solid year in 2005, had a season-ending elbow injury in 2006, then bounced around the league for a few more years. He was active for 14 total seasons but never made an all star game. He hit 24 homers for the surprising 2005 Nats … and led the league in HBPs.

Cristian Guzman signed a somewhat controversial 4yr/$16M contract (it cost the team its 2nd round pick) that started when the team moved to Washington, was god-awful his first year, then had to have shoulder surgery to miss the entirety of 2006. He recovered his stroke in 2007 and actually made the all-star team in 2008 (our only representative during the dark years) … which was enough to convince our idiot GM Jim Bowden to give him a 2yr/$16M extension to an aging shortstop w/ no power on the wrong side of 30. Not surprisingly, his OPS dropped 100 points in 2009 and the team dumped him on Texas in a trade-deadline deal after he had lost his starting job to Ian Desmond, netting the Nats two RHPs (one of which Tanner Roark makes this one of the better trades ever consummated by the Nats executive staff). Guzman played in 15 more games for Texas, batted .152 and never played again.

Aaron Boone, who signed a 1yr/$1M FA contract to be a backup corner infielder with the abhorrent 2008 Nationals team. Boone’s crowning baseball achievement was his extra innings walk-off homer that ended one of the best games in MLB history (Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS between Boston and the Yankees, ranked #6 by MLB’s panel a few years back when ranking the best 20 games of the last half century). Ironically one of his lowest moments was just a couple months later, blowing out his ACL that subsequent winter while playing pickup basketball, costing him the entirety of the 2004 season and the trust of the Yankees organization. He missed 2/3rds of the 2007 season after another left knee injury and the Nats were probably his last gasp shot at extending his career at the age of 35. He got a decent amount of playing time thanks to the fragility of Ryan Zimmerman and Nick Johnson, somehow got another guaranteed MLB deal the following year, went 0-14 for Houston and was released. He’s now an analyst with ESPN. Received 2 votes on the 2015 ballot.

Ron Villone signed a minor league deal in 2009 and was quickly added to the Nats active roster, where he appeared in 63 games as our primary one-out lefty. He pitched the entirety of 2010 on another minor league contract with Syracuse, posting a 6.59 ERA as a 40-year old and never earning a call-up. In 2011 he was invited to spring training again (perhaps with the hope that he’d join the organization as a coach) but he got cut, then pitched a handful of indy league games for his home-town New Jersey indy league team, got hammered, and hung them up. He retired having played in 15 seasons for no less than 12 different teams. In 2012 he took a pitching coach job with the Cubs organization (one of the teams he managed NOT to play for during his career) and has been moving up their organization in that capacity since. Received Zero Hall-of-Fame votes by virtue of not appearing on the BBWAA ballot.

Julian Tavarez signed a one-year deal in the beginning of 2009, started out decently but had an awful stretch that resulted in his DFA in mid July 2009. He never threw another pitch in organized ball, abruptly retiring considering his mid-season release. He ended a 17-year career spanning 11 different franchises. Received Zero Hall-of-Fame votes by virtue of not appearing on the BBWAA ballot. According to his wiki page, he now resides in a suburb of Cleveland (his original professional team) but does not list any post-career activities, baseball-related or otherwise. Received Zero Hall-of-Fame votes by virtue of not appearing on the BBWAA ballot.

Note: it is not entirely clear to me why Villone and Tavarez were not actually ON the 2015 ballot; both seem to have the qualifications (10 years of experience and 5 years retired) and both were on previous versions of the “anticipated ballot” at baseball-reference.com, but neither showed up on BBWAA’s official ballot for this year. Pete Kerzeldid a post reviewing “Nats connected” 2015 ballot members when the ballot came out in Nov 2014 and only mentioned Boone. I include them here since it seems to me they *should* be on the ballot and I’m not sure why they were not (unless someone is passing judgement on the “quality” of HoFame ballot members). Are they pushed to subsequent ballots for some reason? If anyone has insight i’d love to know.

Paul Lo Duca: one of Bowden’s more infamous signings; he went from our opening day catcher in the 2008 season to being released by August 1st. The highlight of his tenure here was having his name being revealed in the Mitchell Report just a couple days after signing with us. After his release, he signed on to finish out the season with Florida, took a year off and attempted a come back in 2010 (signing a ML contract with Colorado but never appearing above AAA). Hard to believe this guy was a 4-time all-star. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Royce Clayton; signed a contract to be the Nats shortstop during the lean Jim Bowden years, and then was included in the Mega swap of players that headed to Cincinnati in the 2006 season. He hung around for one more season in 2007 as a backup short stop and retired afterwards. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Mike Stanton was picked up in mid 2005 after being released by the Yankees, and he pitched well enough for the Nats that he was able to fetch a couple of low-level prospects in a late September move to Boston (who was looking for some late season bullpen cover). The team then re-signed Stanton for 2006, and flipped him again mid-season, this time to the Giants for Shairon Martis. Stanton toiled a one more season before hanging them up after 2007. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Vinny Castilla: signed a two year deal to join the Nats, timed with their inaugural season in Washington, but was traded to Colorado for SP Brian Lawrence when it became apparent that Ryan Zimmerman was set to man the hot corner in DC for the next decade or so. Played one more season and retired after 2006. Received Six (6) Hall-of-fame votes.

Carlos Baerga: signed a one year deal as a 36-yr old to join the Nats in their inaugural season and serve as a backup infielder. Hit .253 in part-time duty and hung ’em up after a 14-year career that can be well described as “journey-man.” He was an integral part of the early 90s Cleveland Indians as their starting 2nd baseman and a 3-time all-star, and ended up playing on 6 major league teams and spent parts one season in Korea. Received Zero hall-of-fame votes.

Griffey is a shoe-in for 2016 class; who else might be affected? Photo via freeteam.com

(Editor note: we’ll take a quick break from the minor league reviews and arguing about why the Nats are trying to fill a 5th starter spot instead of one of their several obvious needs for that classic Late December task: arguing about the Hall of Fame. I wrote most of this post much earlier this summer/fall, waiting for the “hall of fame” blogger season to post it. Now’s as good of a time as any).

In the middle of the 2015 post-season, an interesting tidbit got reported by NBCSports’ Craig Calcaterra: The Hall of Fame BBWAA electorate has been reduced by a whopping 20% thanks to the new voter eligibility rules announced back in July 2015.

20% of voters! That’s a huge number. I thought the rules, when they were first announced, would have a negligible effect on things and would be a paper tiger. But losing 20% of the voters will have a profound effect on the ballots going forward. I agree with Calcaterra in characterizing these types of voters as generally being out of touch, industry-has-passed-them-by, believe everything they read from Murray Chass types who have directly led to the ballot congestion and the ridiculous voting patterns we’ve seen lately. No word yet on whether the category of writers purged also includes those who no longer cover the sport actively (the most egregious example being the 3 voters who write for www.golferswest.com) who not only kept their votes but felt the need to pontificate about the state of the sport!).

Early returns are promising, by the way. The BBHOF tracker website has taken the lead in collecting all published ballots and they’re tracked directly in this Google xls. As of the time of this writing, they have about 20% of the ballots in the tracker spreadsheet and borderline candidates like Piazza, Raines and Bagwell are all trending above the 75% needed. Griffey is at a perfect 100% and still looks like a good bet to beat Tom Seaver‘s all time record. That is until some curmudgeons decide they like Seaver more than Griffey and send in blank ballots or some dumb-ass thing.

1/6/16: Class of 2016 announced, as well as 10,000 internet blogger posts on the topic.

7/24/16: Official induction ceremony for the Class of 2016 in Cooperstown, NY

Anyway. Lets look at the 2016 Ballot (hey, its never too early to do Hall of Fame vote analysis) and guess how things may go for the candidates, now that 20% of dead-weight is gone.

Ken Griffey Jr: if anything, his chances of breaking Tom Seaver‘s vote % record may rise thanks to the elimination of a bunch of curmudgeons who have been witholding votes inexplicably to prevent there ever being a unanimous inductee. Easily gets elected in 2016.

Trevor Hoffman: might be hurt by more new-age voters who realize how minimal the impact of a closer is, no matter how good (Hoffman had just a 28.4 career bWAR, less than Mike Trout had accumulated by the end of his third full season, by way of comparison).

There’s not really anyone else new to the 2016 class worth mentioning; I could see Jim Edmonds getting 5% of the vote to stay on the ballot but nobody else getting much more than home-town beat writer sympathy votes. This isn’t an indictment of Edmonds at all; there’s just too many good players on the ballot (our lament every year) and I think he’s a worthy candidate (some of the Jay Jaffe JAWS analysis on Edmonds is pretty telling; for a period of 10 years during his peak he trailed only Griffey and Bonds in terms of WAR).

How about the hold overs? I think there’s good news for some guys:

Mike Piazza/Jeff Bagwell: two “PED-suspicion” guys who have never had any actual concrete proof against them probably now get in thanks to the elimination of a class of voters who probably believed everything they read in the anonymous-sourced NYTimes articles from 10 years ago. Bagwell has further to go and may not get to 75%, but Piazza should.

Tim Raines: the more older/non sabremetric appreciating voters that go mean the higher percentage of votes Raines will get from more modern voters who realize just how valuable he was. Like Bagwell, he has further to go and may not get to 75% this time, but between 2016 and 2017 he should get in.

Roger Clemens/Barry Bonds: I can see their vote totals rise from the 35% they’ve been getting into the 50% range, still not enough to get enshrinement. Still too many wounds and not enough voters who can overcome their disdain for what happened.

Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa: same story as Clemens/Bonds, except whack off another 20% of votes.

Curt Schilling/Mike Mussina: Hard to see their vote totals changing much; older voters were probably giving Schilling too much credit for the bloody sock game but new voters havn’t supported him as much as expected (and he’s doing himself no favors with his continued idiotic political twitter posts). Mussina just doens’t seem like the kind of pitcher that gets elected to the Hall thanks to a long career without specific accolades and being a known pr*ck to the media.

Everyone else held over from the 2015 ballot not already mentioned (Smith, Martinez, Trammell, Kent, McGriff, Walker, Sheffield, Garciaparra) each have specific issues that likely prevent any of them from getting much above the vote totals they’ve already gotten and probably won’t be helped much by the purge of the electorate. I would vote for some of these guys (namely Martinez and Trammell) but understand why others don’t.

This is as close to a prediction piece as we’ll do for the Hall of Fame 2016 ballot (there’s way too many of them already), but my guess is that we’ll be seeing just Griffey and Piazza in Cooperstown in July 2016, with Bagwell, Raines and perhaps Hoffman right on the cusp to join them in 2017 (where the incoming class has some pretty serious PED-related issues that should be fascinating to watch play out; more on that in a year’s time).

Last year’s version of this post is here; it has links to prior years where I went into my general thought process on yes/no votes per individual player. I’ve tired of writing the same 2,000 word post on the topic since everyone else on the internet is, so this is a bit shorter of a HoF post. And it won’t insult me if you don’t respond or even read this post; there’s far, far too much hall of fame arguing going on in the baseball blogosphere, and i’m no more or less qualified to publish an opinion on this ballot than many of the official BBWAA writers at this point.

The 2015 ballot at baseball-reference.com is here. Once again there’s too many deserving players for not enough spots.

For me, there’s three no-brainer 1st ballot hall-of-famers new to the 2015 ballot: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz. The first two should be unanimous but of course they won’t. In fact, we already have a published ballot of someone who left both off so he could vote for others who “needed the votes.” Smoltz might be borderline for some but for me he’s better than other hurlers recently enshrined; somehow I doubt he gets in this time around.

No for Smith, McGriff, Walker, Mattingly, Sosa and anyone else new to the ballot this year not otherwise mentioned. Why are these No votes? See 2012 and 2013′s links for my reasoning on the names here, all of whom are repeats.

Of course, this is too many “Yes” votes. If I had to cut two of my 12 Yes votes, I’d guess Martinez and McGwire are the first two to go. Or maybe Schilling. Which is a shame because I think all the guys in the “maybe later” have legitimate cases too. But this is the bed that the BBWAA has made for itself with its arbitrary player limit and its wishy-washy stance on alleged PED users.

2015 voting Prediction: Johnson, Martinez and Biggio elected. Smoltz just misses, and Piazza & Bagwell get close enough that they’ll go in with the 2016 class (which only has one no-brainer candidate in Ken Griffey, Jr). Still no love for Bagwell, the PED brothers, or Raines, much to the chagrin of the sabr-crowd.

1/6/15 update: My prediction was too conservative: Johnson, Martinez, Smoltz and Biggio inducted in 2015. Piazza got 69% of the vote and seems like a good bet for 2016. however Bagwell and Raines lagged seriously behind, at just 55% of the vote each. Another huge gap after that leads to a trio of players in the mid 30s … not nearly enough to talk about them getting in next year.

Before starting, if you hadn’t heard Deadspin has bought a Hall of Fame vote this year and is going to submit it as populated by crowd sourcing. Click on this link to go to Deadspin.com’s page to vote. Voting at deadspin ends on 12/28/13 and all hall of fame ballots are due to be mailed back to the BBWAA by 12/31/13. The class of 2014 will be announced later in January.

Everyone else has a post about how they’d vote if they had a BBWAA ballot. Here’s mine. Only its slightly different from how i’ve done these in the past.

Joe Posnanski has put out a survey in October 2013 that anyone can take that simply asks you to rank the 2014 candidates 1-10. It is an interesting exercise because it very quickly highlights the depth of the ballot, since as everyone knows, there are many very deserving candidates who are outside the top 10 and who may very well fall off the ballot this year because of the glut of candidates. It also makes you think; if you rank your candidates 1 to 10 … how many names would you be leaving off your ballot that you’d want to vote for?

So, instead of doing a “who’s on/who’s off” post like i’ve done in years past (and like everyone else does) here’s a different take driven by Posnanski’s ranking question.

My first 8 “Yes Votes” were relatively easy: Maddux, Bonds, Clemens, Thomas, McGwire, Bagwell, Glavine, Piazza. I don’t think there’s one of those 8 candidates who shouldn’t be a slam dunk hall-of-famer based on baseball accomplishments. (That most all of them likely do not get in because of PED suspicions is another story). The only one of my top 8 that doesn’t match with Posnanski’s survey results is McGwire (replace him with Raines, everyone’s favorite Bert Blyleven-style charity case for getting more support).

Then I got stuck. Who were the last 2 I’d put on the ballot? Lets look at the rest of the 2014 ballot:

Voting No altogether: Walker, McGriff, Palmeiro, Smith, Sosa and anyone else new to the ballot this year not otherwise mentioned. Why are these No votes? See 2012 and 2013’s links for my reasoning on the 5 names here, all of whom are repeats.

Remaining Pitchers in order that I’d likely vote them in: Schilling, Morris, Mussina

Remaining Hitters in the order that I’d likely vote them in: Raines, Martinez, Kent, Biggio, Trammell

So I guess my last two would likely be Schilling and Raines, or perhaps Raines and Martinez.

Man, tough ballot this year.

If there wasn’t a 10-person limit, then I’d go crazy and probably vote for 16 candidates, basically the first 8 plus all the other “remaining” players above. I’m by no means a “small hall” person, and I’m also not obsessed with the stat-driven arguments against Morris. I think all these guys merit a plaque in Cooperstown.

Coincidentally, to all those people who write 1,000 words on all the things the BBWAA should do to fix the congestion issue (expand beyond 10 names, remove the 5% threshold), just stop wasting your time. Year after year the BBWAA stays in the news for weeks at a time exactly because they refuse to change the standards. Why would they relent now?

If you want to read how I’ve weighed in on the Hall votes in year’s past, here’s some links:

And lastly, I have a huge draft post dated from Dec 2011 with pictures from my actual visit to the Hall of Fame that I started but never finished (mostly because adding pictures to WordPress is a huge pain in the *ss). Maybe I’ll get bored, finish it up and post that in conjunction with the 2014 class announcement.

Can Jack Morris eventually be the first “1980s Starter” to make the Hall? Photo John Iacono via si.com

First off: I’m not a “small hall” guy. (How can you, when looking at the litany of obscure players the Veteran’s Committee has already enshrined while the current ballot has literally a dozen names that you can make an argument for?) So naturally I want to see enshrinement for a larger number of the “marquee” names in baseball’s history. I view the Hall of Fame as a museum dedicated to the game, and recognizing all the eras of the game for better or for worse. I’m for expanding the current ballot and If I had a vote i’d be maxing out the 10 names with a desire to put a couple more guys on.

I’m also distinctly of the opinion that maybe the era of baseball just prior to today’s is underrepresented in Cooperstown. Specifically, my theory is that the massive boom in offense that the game has seen in the last 20 years coupled with a distinct shift in the way pitching staffs are managed has led to voters and fans to discount and dismiss the accomplishments of players specifically from the 1980s.

MLB.com has a show called “Prime 9,” where they list the best 9 players/teams related to certain topics. Recently they showed the “Best 9 players of the 1980s” by position, and it led me to use that list as a starting point for a discussion of marquee players from the 1980s and to decide whether or not the decade is under represented in Cooperstown.

Here’s Prime 9’s top player by position and their Hall of Fame status. Throughout this entire article, Blue == Hall of Fame players while Red == non-Hall of Fame Players.

Four of the Nine players listed as “Best of the Decade” are not in the Hall of Fame. I think there’s something wrong here. I know Morris is incredibly polarizing and probably never gets in, while the other three guys (Evans, Murphy, Mattingly) each had knocks against them related to durability and peak that prevented them from being enshrined. Perhaps these are future Veteran’s committee picks.

I know the above list is arguable; perhaps those players aren’t necessarily the “best” at their positions for the decade. So lets talk about the leading candidates per position who didn’t make the Prime-9’s list, and their own HoF status. The MLB show didn’t distinguish between SP and RPs so I’ve separated them out below, nor did they distinguish between the OF positions like they did for the team selected above.

I’ve included the guys in the above “Prime 9” list in the lists below for ease of analysis by position.

(Coincidentally; as you read the vote percentage totals, keep in mind that a voting percentage of less than 1% means that the player got only a handful of votes from the 500+ votes tallied each year, a woefully small number).

Kirk Gibson: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2001 with only 2.5% of the voting.

Dave Winfield: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2001 with 84.5% of the vote.

Kirby Puckett: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2001 with 82.1% of the vote.

Tony Gwynn: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2007 with 97.6% of the vote.

Pedro Guerrero: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1998 with only 1.3% of the voting.

Jim Rice: 15th ballot HoFamer in 2009 with 76.4% of the vote.

Daryl Strawberry: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2005 with only 1.2% of the voting.

Jack Clark: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1998 with only 1.5% of the voting.

Andy Van Slyke: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2001 without receiving a single vote.

This makes for 16 total outfielders on the “Best of the decade” list. Of those 16 outfielders, 10 are not in the Hall of Fame. Would you say that the position is under-represented in the Hall if only 6 outfielders from an entire decade of the sport are enshrined? Maybe, maybe not. To say nothing of the fact that 2 of these 6 HoFame 80s outfielders (Rice and Dawson) were heavily criticized upon enshrinement for being voted in based on remnants of “old man” statistics.

Jack Clark you say? 50 Career WAR. That’s nothing to shake a stick at. Higher than a number of Hall of Fame hitters. I remember him being more of a power hitter than he turned out to be. He just couldn’t stay healthy; only 5 seasons where he played close to a “full season” in 18 years in the league. I remember him fondly from my childhood; my family is from San Francisco and I always rooted for the Giants as a kid.

Middle Infielders:

Cal Ripken Jr: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2007 with 98.5% of the vote.

Ryne Sandberg: 3rd ballot HoFamer in 2005 with 76.2% of the vote.

Garry Templeton: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1998 with only 0.4% of the voting.

Ozzie Smith: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2002 with 91.7% of the vote.

Alan Trammell: on current ballot, his 12th attempt. Max votes: 36.8% last year.

Robin Yount: 1st ballot HoFamer in 1999 with 77.5% of the vote.

Lou Whitaker: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2001 with only 2.9% of the voting.

Dave Conception: fell of HoF ballot on his 15th attempt this year in 2008. Max votes: 16.9% in 1998.

Lots of baseball pundits have lamented Whitaker’s fate, while plenty others vociferiously argue for Trammell, who had the misfortune of being both the 2nd best offensive SS (to Ripken) and the 2nd best defensive SS (to Smith) of his era simultaneously, thus being overshadowed by both. Conception was about an equal at the plate to Ozzie Smith but only about half the Gold Gloves, but still seems like he deserved a bit more credit than he got in the voting.

Third Basemen

Mike Schmidt: 1st ballot HoFamer in 1995 with 96.5% of the vote.

Wade Boggs: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2005 with 91.9% of the vote.

George Brett: 1st ballot HoFamer in 1999 with 98.2% of the vote.

Paul Molitor: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2004 with 85.2% of the vote.

Terry Pendleton: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2004 with only 0.2% of the voting.

Tim Wallach: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2002 with only 0.2% of the voting.

Buddy Bell: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1995 with only 1.7% of the voting.

Four first ballot hall of fame 3rd Basemen played in the era (even if most consider Molitor primarly a DH later in his career) which is saying something considering there are only 12 full time 3rd baseman in the Hall from all of history. The all-star game starters for the entire decade were almost entirely Schmidt, Boggs and Brett. The others I fully acknowledge are “stretches” but did each have several all-star appearances during the decade.

First Basemen

Don Mattingly: on current ballot, his 13th attempt. Max votes: 28.2% in 2001, his first year on the ballot.

Steve Garvey: fell of HoF ballot on his 15th attempt this year in 2007. Max votes: 42.6% in 1995.

Mark McGwire: on current ballot, his 7th attempt. Max votes: 23.7% in 2010.

Not much to say here: There seemed to be a definite lack of quality first basemen for the decade; only one is enshrined in the Hall. Many of the all-star 1B appearances early in the decade went to aging stars Rod Carew and Pete Rose, who by that point in their long careers had been moved to first base for defensive purposes. McGwire’s issues are obvious (and he’s clearly more well known for his exploits in the 1990s, so its arguable if he even belongs in this 1980’s centric discussion).

Catchers

Gary Carter: 6th ballot HoFamer in 2003 with 78% of the vote.

Carlton Fisk: 2nd ballot HoFamer in 2000 with 79.6% of the vote.

Lance Parrish: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2001 with 1.7% of the voting.

Benito Santiago: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2011 with 0.2% of the voting.

Darrell Porter: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1993 with zero (0) votes.

Tony Pena: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2003 with0.4% of the voting.

Terry Kennedy: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1997 with exactly one (1) vote.

Yes, I’m really stretching for 1980s catchers. Basically Carter made the all-star team every year for the NL while Fisk made half the All Star Starts for the AL during the same time. The backups were generally catchers having a decent first half, many of whom never made an other all-star team. Boone was better than you remember, hence his hanging around the bottom of the ballot for a few years.

Closers/Relievers

Lee Smith: on current ballot, his 11th attempt. Max votes: 50.6% in 2012.

Bruce Sutter: 13th ballot HoFamer in 2006 with 76.9% of the vote.

Dennis Eckersley: 1st ballot HoFamer in 2004 with 83.2% of the vote.

Rich Gossage: 9th ballot HoFamer in 2008 with 85.8% of the vote.

Jeff Reardon: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2000 with 4.8% of the voting.

Tom Henke: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 2004 with 0.6% of the voting.

Dan Quisenberry: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1996 with 3.8% of the voting.

Kent Tekulve: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1995 with 1.3% of the voting.

Willie Hernandez: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1995 with 0.4% of the voting.

I’m not going to vociferously argue for Relievers/Closers to be inducted, since I think they’re mostly overrated in terms of their contributions to wins. But I will say that a couple of these guys were far better than you remember. Take Tom Henke: career 157 ERA+, which was better than either Sutter or Gossage PLUS he had more career saves (311 for Henke compared to 310 for Gossage and 300 for Sutter). How exactly are two of these three guys Hall of Famers while Henke got exactly 6 votes out of 515 his first time on the ballot? These voting patterns just seem drastically inconsistent.

All the above though pales in comparison to what we’re about to see.

Starters

Jack Morris: on current ballot, his 14th attempt. Max votes: 67.7% this year.

John Tudor: fell off HoF ballot on his 1st attempt in 1996 with 0.4% of the voting.

Roger Clemens: on current ballot, his 1st attempt. Max votes: 37.6% in 2013.

Here is where I think I really have a problem with the Hall of Fame treatment players in the 1980s; I think the entire generation of Starting Pitchers has been generally underrated and overlooked. Look at this list of pitchers and look at the number of guys who failed to even stay on the ballot for more than one season. Meanwhile, you can argue that the three guys who ARE on this list who are in the Hall of Fame (Carlton, Ryan and Blyleven) all actually “belong” to the 1970s; they just happened to have longer careers that bled into the 1980s. Clemens appears here because his late 80s debut was so strong but clearly he’s a player of the 90s, and his reasons for non-inclusion thus far are obvious.

Do you mean to tell me that NONE of these other 1980’s starters merits inclusion to the Hall of Fame? That an entire decade of starting pitchers doesn’t historically merit inclusion? I’m not going to argue that all (or most) of these players belong, but it is kind of shocking that so many of the leading pitchers of that era were given so little consideration.

My biggest beef may be with Saberhagen. Here’s the side-by-side stats of Saberhagen and a Mystery pitcher we’ll identify in a moment:

Wins

Losses

IP

K’s

ERA

ERA+

bWAR

Saberhagen

167

117

2562 2/3

1715

3.34

126

56

Mystery Player

165

87

2324 1/3

2396

2.76

131

50.3

Pretty close, no? Saberhagen contributed more WAR and was nearly this player’s equal in ERA+, which adjusts to the eras. Mystery player’s W/L record is better … but then again, havn’t we learned that wins and losses are meaningless stats now? A couple more facts here: Saberhagen won two Cy Young awards while the Mystery player won Three. Saberhagen led the league in ERA just once while Mystery player did it 5 years in a row.

The Mystery player here (if you havn’t already guessed) is none other than Sandy Koufax. Now, I’m certainly not saying that Saberhagen is the equal of Koufax, certainly not when you look at Koufax’s last 5 seasons or his 4 no-hitters. My point is this: Koufax was a first ballot hall of famer … and Saberhagen got 7 votes out of 545 ballots. Saberhagen may not be a Hall of Famer but he deserved to be in the discussion longer than he was.

Others have mentioned the lack of support for Dave Steib, who had a relatively similar statistical case to Saberhagen. Similar career bWAR (53.5), similar ERA+ (122), and similar injury issues that curtailed his career. Steib’s award resume isn’t as impressive (zero Cy Youngs but 7 All-Star appearances in his first 11 seasons), and he was basically done as an effective player by the time he was 33.

There are some other surprises on this list too. Jimmy Key you say? Go look at his career stats and you’ll be surprised just how good he was. 186-117, a 3.51 ERA (which sounds mediocre) but a career 122 ERA+. A couple of stellar seasons (two 2nd place Cy Young votes). I’m not saying he’s a hall of famer, but I am saying that he was better than you remember. There’s absolutely pitchers in the Hall with worse ERA+ than Key’s.

Coincidentally, you can make the argument that many of these players really “belonged” to a different decade, if you wanted to really just focus this discussion on the 1980 decade.

Gooden, Van Slyke, Puckett, McGwire, Clemens and Pendleton had careers that started the late 80s but who flourished mostly in the 1990s.

But, I think the point is made, especially when it comes to pitchers. So I left all these players in.

Here’s a couple other ways to look at the best players of the 1980s. Here’s a list of the top 20 positional players by “Win Shares” for the decade (data cut and pasted from an online forum). As with above, blue=hall of famer while red indicates not.

Most HoFame pundits lament the lack of support for Raines specifically, but it is interesting to see how high up both Murphy and Evans fall on this list.

Now, here’s Pitcher WAR accumulated in the 1980s. I took this data from a posting on BeyondtheBoxScore blog back in 2010, who was arguing (of course) why Jack Morris didn’t deserve to be in the hall of fame. However, the table here also illustrates nicely who were really the best pitchers of the decade, and most of these guys are in the list above.

Notice the same 3 names appear here as appeared above for Hall of Fame starters. Also notice the surprisingly high appearances of players like Soto and Higuera; I didn’t even include them in the above analysis, perhaps providing my own bias because certainly I wouldn’t have included these two in any conversation about the best pitchers of the 80s. But the point is now made statistically; of the 20 best pitchers by WAR for the entire decade, only 3 are enshrined in the Hall.

I havn’t done this analysis for other decades but I’d be surprised if other decades were so underrepresented. Think about how many obvious hall of famers pitched in the 1990s; Just off the top of my head: Clemens, Mussina, Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Johnson, Pedro, Schilling and perhaps eventually Hoffman and Rivera. Maybe guys like Cone and Pettitte deserve more thought. Lee Smith is still on the ballot. That’s a lot of names for one decade as compared to what’s happened to the 1980s guys.

So, after all this, do we think the 1980s players are underrepresented in the Hall? I count 17 positional players, 3 relievers and 3 starters from the era. Perhaps the answer is, “there’s plenty of positional representation but the Starters are not fairly represented.”

Why are there so few starters from this era enshrined? Did we just see a relatively mediocre time period in baseball with respect to starting pitchers? Did we just get unlucky with the longevity and injury issues related to the best pitchers of the era (Hershiser, Saberhagen, Steib)? Did changes in bullpen management that came about in the 90s (lefty-lefty matchups and more specialized relievers) combined with increasing awareness/sensitivety to pitch counts (100 pitches and you’re out) contribute to this fact? If you’re a starter and the assumption is that you’re pitching 9 innings no matter what your pitch count is, you’re going to approach the game differently and pitch with a different level of effort than if you knew you were getting the hook after 100 pitches and/or in roughly the 6th or 7th inning. Did this contribute to more mediocre-appearing ERAs for starters of this era? Is that a good argument to use, as compared to 90s’ and modern pitchers who go all-out for 7 innings and then sit (versus starters of the 90s, who would often face the 3-4-5 of the opposing team a FOURTH time in the late innings while sitting on 140 pitches)?

Biggio has to wait for enshrinement to the HoF. Photo Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle

Obligatory HoF Reaction post.

I wasn’t going to write one. But email/text conversations later I thought it may just be easier to write a thousand words on the topic.

As the front page of the BBWAA site says, “No players elected for the first time since 1996.” Also for only the 8th time in the history of balloting, no player was elected this cycle by the electorate.

We all knew this day was coming. You can google articles from nearly 5 years ago when the whole slew of these first time players were first known to all be eligible on this ballot and know this day was coming. And now here we are.

My interpretation of the results for the major players kind of goes like the following:

Craig Biggio was “penalized” by some voters for not being a “First Ballot Hall of Famer” calibre player. Therefore lots of voters who have annointed themselves the keepers of this title skipped voting for him this year. Much like what happened to Roberto Alomar (who went from 73% to 90% from 1st ballot to 2nd) we probably see Biggio get > 90% next year. He’s clearly a hall of famer, but clearly not a first balloter in some eyes.

Jack Morris is screwed. He only rose from 66% to 67%, indicating to me that enough people have bought into the anti-Morris narrative that has been so fully expoused by sabre-tinged writers to outlast the old-school guard of baseball writers who covered Morris and remember him as I do.

Piazza and Bagwell both are side effects of the PED argument, but clearly get more credit for possibly being clean than the next two names. But enough people are believing that “back acne” proves PED usage for Piazza, and “muscles” proves PED usage for Bagwell, so both will likely struggle to get to 75% for a few years.

Clemens and Bonds: both getting almost identical vote totals in the 36-37% range despite both being amongst the best who ever played indicates a clear statement being made by the older voters, who clearly are penalizing these guys for their alleged/accused/leaked grand testimony involving PEDs. I’ll bet though that both players will get significantly more votes in subsequent years and probably eventually make it.

Sosa and McGwire: probably both never get in, since both are in the 12-16% range. Writers clearly believe both guys were 100% the product of andro and steroids, and thus artificially gained their accomplishments.

Bernie Williams and Kenny Lofton both amazingly will fall off the ballot. I don’t think either are HoFamers but I also thought they deserved to hang around on the ballot for a while (kind of like a Dale Murphy or a Don Mattingly) to discuss.

Tim Raines and Lee Smith are probably never getting in; their vote totals don’t seem to be changing much, and a slew of more deserving names are coming in the next 5 years.

Edgar Martinez, Trammell, McGriff, Walker, Mattingly: they’re all marginal candidates for different reasons, and they all seem likely to die on the ballot in the 30-40% range. I like Martinez for the Hall; in a sentence if you elect the best relief pitchers, how can you not elect the best designated hitters?

Palmeiro sealed his fate the moment he tested positive. It doesn’t matter if he broached magical barriers of 500 (homers) and 3000 (career hits). He’ll never get in.

Lastly, the interesting case of Curt Schilling. 38.8% on the first ballot. What does this mean? He’s definitely never been accused of PEDs, had a great peak, was absolutely one of the best pitchers in the game for at least a short amount of time, has 3000 Ks but not 300 wins (or close to it), had an iconic moment in the bloody sock game, and was on two different WS winning teams. A 127 career ERA+ puts him career 48th, even or ahead of plenty of hall of famers. Why so few votes? What statement is being made here? I’m not sure entirely. Maybe this is a combination of the “not a first ballot hall of famer” denials AND some sense of outrage against the outspoken Schilling from older media members who covered him and still vote primarily with their egos.

Back to the question of the article; is the HoF in trouble? Well, yes and no.

No because I think Biggio will be elected next year, along with two more big names who have never had a schred of PED accusations (Maddux and Glavine). And you can see guys in each of the subsequent years easily being elected (Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez in 2015, Ken Griffey Jr in 2016, Pudge and Manny in 2017 unless there’s still PED outrage at that point. And that ensures there’s ceremonies with who should be absolute no-brainer electees each year for the next few years.

But, Yes because Cooperstown and the Hall itself are not always profit making endeavors, and having an election year without any recently retired players is going to mean a massive drop in income for the town and the hall. Reportedly the museum has lost money in 8 of the last 10 years. That coupled with the continued recession, and we could see some serious financial hardship in upstate New York in 2013. Will it be enough that the BBWAA agrees to one of the litany of election system changes being proposed on the internet? Maybe, maybe not. But if this continues into 2013, yeah we may see something change. Perhaps a panel of judges versus the BBWAA electorate (similar to what the NFL does) makes sense in the long run. The point is that the HoF NEEDS to have a compelling election class in order to stay profitable, and may change its entry mechanisms to guarantee attendance (and thus revenues) each year.

One thing I do agree with; I think writers who purposely send in a blank ballot should be removed from the voting system. You just can not look at this list of players and tell me there’s not at least ONE deserving candidate. A blank ballot does nothing but hurt the chances of legitimate players to be honored and should be interpreted as a writer who does not take the process seriously.

Murkier are my thoughts on entrance requirements to the BBWAA in general. Should we allow in all these internet baseball writers? I think that a lot of the moral outrage and indignance expressed by frequent baseball bloggers over the BBWAA and the “old school” writers is simply mis-placed jealousy that they (the internet blogger) are not eligible to vote. There is a section of the BBWAA constitution that talks about internet writer acceptance and the requirements don’t seem that unfair. The intent of the organization is to find people who “cover the game” but also people who actually “attend the games,” interview players and coaches, and are generally members of the traditional media. People who have access and who understand more than the average baseball blogger, who interprets box scores and statistics websites to pass judgement. I’m ok with the limitations set out as thus.

Two other quick thoughts:

Yeah, we should probably increase the 10-player limit.

Yeah, we should probably force writers to reveal their ballots (much as the major awards now do).

Until next year. One thing is certain; much like relief over the end of the election news, I’m relieved that no more HoF articles will be appearing.

As we’re about to read, over and over again from every writer in the Baseball world, this is the Steroid-era ballot. Several of the biggest names of the era are on the ballot. Just in case you were wondering who has or hasn’t been officially linked to PEDs, here’s a handy guide for your ethical dilemma.

I typed up such exhaustive opinions on a number of candidates from the two previous versions of these posts, that I won’t repeat them here. Instead i’ll just state below, of the returning candidates this year here’s who I’d vote for and who I wouldn’t in list form.

Returning Candidates I’d vote for:

Jeff Bagwell

Jack Morris

Tim Raines

Mark McGwire

Edgar Martinez

Returning Candidates that I would NOT vote for (my reasons mostly are stated in the 2012 class post referenced above):

Bernie Williams

Alan Trammell

Lee Smith

Larry Walker

Rafael Palmeiro

Don Mattingly

Fred McGriff

Dale Murphy

New Candidates in 2012 that I’d vote for, with some discussion; Unlike a lot of opinions I state, my thoughts on the Hall of Fame have always been more driven by how a player “seems” to be in the pantheon of baseball history. I don’t like to get into the same stats-driven discussions that other writers do. So and so had a career WAR of X, or a career ERA+ of Y, which makes him better than this other guy.

Barry Bonds: A transcendent player before any use of “the cream” or “the clear,” this 7-time MVP is clearly in the pantheon of the greatest players of all-time. The best 5-tool player since Willie Mays, the only thing that should have been standing in the way of unanimous voting is Bonds’ surly nature towards sports writers (several of whom would have “penalized” him by omitting him from first ballot status).

Roger Clemens: replace “7-time MVP” with “7-time Cy Young winner” and the Bonds argument essentially repeats itself with Clemens. Normally we’d be talking about his place as one of the greatest right handed pitchers to ever play the game. Instead we’re talking about how much of his later career was enhanced by virtue of foreign substances.

Mike Piazza: One of the best 3 hitting catchers of all time (Johnny Bench being the best, with Yogi Berra in the discussion), his purported “back acne” proof of steroid use likely costs him votes. Which is just ridiculous, but that’s the nature of this ballot and the next 15 year’s worth of ballots unfortunately.

Curt Schilling: his career accomplishments don’t include a Cy Young award, but that wasn’t for lack of trying; he just happened to pitch in the same ERA as Randy Johnson and Johan Santana in his prime power. But Schilling was a game-changing starter, an Ace who could get you the win. He was one of the biggest “big game” pitchers out there. And, his legendary playoff performances push him over the top for me. Some will argue against him b/c he “only” had 216 wins or he “only” had a career 3.46 ERA. He passes the eye test for me.

Craig Biggio: he wasn’t the flashiest player, but then again you can’t judge middle infielders the same way as you judge power hitters. Biggio hit the 3,000 hit plateau, was a good combination of power (291 career homers) and speed (414 career SBs), and showed good defense (several Gold Gloves). For one of the last career one-team guys, he makes the cut for me.

New Candidates that I would NOT vote for:

Sammy Sosa: 600+ career homers, and I can’t help but think that a good number of those were either PED or corked-bat assisted. That’s probably completely unfair, but you can make a good argument that more than 150 of his career homers were likely “surplus” to his legitimate career capabilities. He averaged 37 homers/season as he approached his prime, then suddenly averaged 60/season for four seasons. Clearly Bonds’ 73-homer season is attributable to a single-season PED spike, but Sosa made a career of it. There’s just no way for me to distinguish who the real Sosa was (he had a 99 OPS+ the year before his power spike) versus the PED enhanced version.

Kenny Lofton: I know lots of people view Lofton in the same breath as Rickey Henderson in terms of quality lead-off hitters, but to me he was just a vagabond who kept looking for work year after year. He played for 12 teams by the time he hung them up. Perhaps I’m not really “remembering” his time in Cleveland, where he stole a ton of bases and set the table for that powerful lineup. He had a handful of gold gloves, a handful of all-star appearances. I may be under-appreciating him a bit, but when I hear his name I don’t knee-jerk Hall of Famer.

Everyone else first time eligible, the best player of which is probably David Wells. Wells basically had two good seasons (the only two times he received any Cy Young consideration) and otherwise was a rubber-armed hurler who prided himself on making 35 starts despite being in god-awful shape (as noted extensively in Joe Torre‘s book The Yankee Years).

I’d be shocked if anyone else on the first time eligible list got enough votes to even stay eligible for 2014’s ballot.

Critics may state that my fake ballot has some inconsistencies; how can I support a vote for Biggio but not for Trammell? How can you vote for McGwire but not Sosa? How can you vote for Edgar Martinez but not Larry Walker? How can you vote for *any* PED guys but shun Sosa and Palmeiro? How can you support Morris but not support Wells? All these are good points; good arguable points. Maybe if I had an official ballot I’d have a more serious discussion with myself about these points. All the above thumbs-up/thumbs-down opinions are mostly knee jerk, did the guy “feel” like a hall of famer as opposed to a full statistical analysis. As I covered in my Jack Morris piece, I think its ok to have slightly lesser players who contributed more to the baseball pantheon than slightly better players statistically who had no real lasting impact on the game.

And for now, that’s good enough for me and my fake Hall of Fame ballot.

Here’s Tom Boswell‘s weekly Monday chat on 11/28/11. Of the baseball questions he took, here’s how I’d have answered them. With the Wizard’s 0-8 start there’s a lot of kvetching about NBA.

As always, questions are edited for clarity and I write my own answer prior to reading his.

Q: What is your “take” on Ross Detwiler and could he become a better pitcher than Gio Gonzalez?

A: My “take” on Ross Detwiler is that he’s too frail to stay healthy long enough to be counted on for heavy-duty innings, and that he throws too much across his body to get his breaking stuff to work properly. Now, throwing across your body isn’t a bad thing (see Johnson, Randy) but Detwiler’s never been consistent long enough to be anything more than an emergency/late season starter for this team. Can he be better than Gio Gonzalez? Not really; Gonzalez is only a year older but has 60 more MLB starts, an all-star appearance and the talent to win 20 games in the AL. If Detwiler was really that promising … we wouldn’t have acquired Gonzalez in the first place. Boswell says the team likes Detwiler, but Johnson likes a lefty heavy rotation in this division. But the team already has 5 starters signed to major league contracts, so I can’t see how Detwiler wins anything more than a bullpen spot.

Q: Is Prince Fielder really coming here? Why is there so little market for him?

A: I’ll answer the 2nd part first; there’s so little market for Prince Fielder for several reasons.

If you look at the top payroll clubs, basically every team either has a long-term 1B commitment (names like Mark Teixeira, Ryan Howard, Adrian Gonzalez, Albert Pujols, Paul Konerko, Justin Morneau, and Miguel Cabrera) or is dealing with topped-out payroll or financial issues (Mets, Giants, Dodgers) that are preventing them from purchasing a big-money star. So lots of your usual suspects are out. He’s left trying to convince mostly 2nd-tier payroll clubs to spend like first tier clubs.

His agent Scott Boras is generally the “lets wait and try to build a crescendo of rumors” type of agent. It has clearly worked in the past … but it doesn’t seem to be working now. I think Boras’ strategy has run its course to a certain extent and teams are wary of the “mystery team” in on these major players.

Fielder isn’t exactly an adonis of a physical specimen. He’s got a bad body, hasn’t really shown that he can control his weight, and has a pretty good barometer of his future physical condition in the form of his MLB playing father Cecil Fielder. Prince may be young and may clearly be a top5 hitter in the league, but teams are not going to want to put up 8 year commitments for a player who may be washed up by the time he’s 34. To make matters worse, Prince is a below-average first baseman AND only a handful of teams have available money and available DH spots.

Frankly, I think Prince needs to sign a shorter term deal with high AAV, get a team like the Nats to commit and then re-hit the FA market at age 30-31 when he’ll still have value.

Now, is he coming to the Nats? If I was Mike Rizzo i’d sign him in a heartbeat for 3yrs/$75M. I’d balk at an 8-year deal. But, the rumors persist and have been swirling for more than 2 weeks. So where there’s heat, there’s likely fire. Boswell says that the key date is Jan 18th, the day that the Rangers either sign or cut bait on Yu Darvish. If the Rangers suddenly have $120M that they didn’t think they’d have yesterday, they will sign Fielder.

Q: Baseball is set to announce their HOf inductees for 2012 today. Anyone you feel strongly about that should get in? What are your thoughts on Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly?

A: (note that I’m writing this BEFORE the 3pm announcement, so by the time you read this we’ll know who got in and who didn’t)

What do I think about Murphy and Mattingly? Both suffer from more or less the same issue: they were both great players for very short amounts of time. Murphy was a better player all in all than we remembered and for four seasons (82-86) was probably THE best player in the game. Mattingly retired at 33 and was solid but had the same 4-year excellence followed by less flashy seasons. They’re good players who weren’t transcendent enough to get their own plaques in Cooperstown. Boswell mostly agrees with the above.

Q: What do you think of this scenario: Fielder signs elsewhere, LaRoche starts out hot, we flip him to Tampa for Upton as Harper takes over in RF and Morse moves to 1B.

A: Sounds great. Except that this scenario really only serves the perfect world desires of the Nationals. In reality LaRoche is a slow starter and we may really hear the boo-birds early. Morse was great in 2011 but most predict a sliding back. Harper probably needs some MLB adjustment time. We’ll see what happens. Boswell likes this scenario. Sure, who wouldn’t? But it does sound a bit too convenient.

Q: Is there ANY chance Boras goes for something like 3yrs/$75mil for Prince?

A: Yeah, I think there is a chance, as described above. He’ll push for longer though until the last possible minute, so this won’t play out for a while and we’ll continue to hear rumors for weeks. Boswell says it’ll “never happen.” And lays out a doomsday payroll scenario for the team. Which I don’t entirely buy; we’ve been at $60-65M in payroll for 6 years … despite being in a very wealthy market. At some point, this team will be good, will draw fans to the park and will increase revenues. And the payroll should rise to reflect that.

Q: Where are the Nats finding the (approximately) 60 runs they’ll need to add (assuming pitching stays constant) in order to go from 80 to 90 wins?

A: A good question. Some from Zimmerman, some from LaRoche, some from natural improvements from Desmond, Espinosa, and Ramos, and some from a rebound year from Werth. That’s a LOT of assumpions. Fielder would *really* help in the run creation department (he created 35 more runs than Morse last year … that’d be 5-6 wins all by himself). Boswell echos much of the above.

Q: Where do you (as an assumed HoFame voter) draw the line between admitted and suspected when it comes to steroids and the HOF?

A: If it were me, I’d go based on existing evidence. That’s all you can do. And the Mitchell Report is not really “evidence,” but more heresay and he said-she said. So Palmeiro and McGwire have some warts. Bagwell does not and it is generally unfair to lump him into the steroid-poster boy club. Boswell agrees with the above … too bad he doesn’t have a vote to defend year after year.

Q: Given what we now know about the Steroid era, is there any reason to suspect Cal Ripken of using?

A: (The allegation also being that Ripken was friends with Brady Anderson, whose 50 homer season seems awfully suspicious in hind-sight). Nobody’s ever said a word about Ripken and PEDs. You have to think he was well aware of his legacy the closer he got to 2130 games. I’d be shocked if he was shown to be a user. Him and Derek Jeter would be probably the two most shocking PED revelations in the history of the game, if they turned out to be true. Boswell doesn’t think Ripken profiled to a typical user.

Q: Why isn’t there more narrative about how the Werth contract is really killing this team, when considering the future payroll implications of having Werth, Zimmerman and Fielder potentially signed to long term, $20M+ AAV contracts?

A: I’m sure it is internally. It certainly is everywhere else in the blogosphere. The Werth contract is pretty indefensible, certainly was at the time it was signed and is even more so now. I just hope the guy has a bounce back season and really contributes.

Q: How does the TV money rise so much in the MASN deal? Aren’t viewer numbers abhorrent?

A: Good question. I don’t know. Boswell has the answer; the contract is tied not to revenues or ad money, but to comparable RSN sizes in other markets. And right now Houston and Dallas (our two closest sized cities) get 2-3 TIMES the money out of their RSNs. I cackle at watching Angelos have to write checks to the Nats, but really wish they’d cancel the contract altogether. I hate the fact that we’re enriching Angelos day after day.

Q: Why do the HoFame voters suddenly agree to induct a player? If he’s good enough on the first ballot, he should be good enough on any ballot.

A: Because there’s a cache to being a “First Ballot Hall of Famer” and LOTS of voters exclude guys on the first vote as a result. There’s never been a unanimous selection, and there never will be. But there’s plenty of guys who were very good players who got in on #2 or #3 ballot. Guys like Blyleven and Rice who languish for a decade on the ballot are rare. Boswell agrees.

Q: Is Toronto a more likely landing spot for Fielder, since they were all-in for Darvish and lost out?

A: Makes sense frankly. They could be sensing weakness in the Boston and Yankees lack of activity this off-season … Boswell says it makes sense but makes a good point; does Fielder want to commit to Toronto, knowing they’ll get outspent year after year by Boston and New York? Does he commit to a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since the divisions split? Would you?

Q: How similar is Harper’s call-up situation to Mickey Mantle’s situation?

A: Not very. Completely different baseball climates. Harper has his millions already, and there’s very specific service time implications. Mantle played under the reserve clause, there was no service time issues, no arbitration, no free agency. So the Yankees could do whatever they wanted with him year after year. Boswell doesn’t really comment.

Q: Does Fielder make sense if the Nats are planning on building a cost-controlled dynasty? The 1998 yankees didn’t have any 30-homer players, let alone a big bopper at $25M/year.

A: Fair. Lots of Nats bloggers keep coming back to the payroll implications of Werth, extending Zimmerman and buying Fielder. And they’re fair. That doesn’t even talk about what to do with other big-time stars we have to deal with potentially. But i’ll respond by saying this; we don’t KNOW what the owner’s payroll limits are. All we have to go by is the past payroll figures. What if this team is just biding its time before blowing out payroll to $120M? Boswell says this is well put and signs off.